In this contribution, we address a major puzzle in the evolution of human material culture: If maturing individuals just learn their parental generation's material culture, then what is the origin of key innovations as documented in the archeological record? We approach this question by coupling a life‐history model of the costs and benefits of experimentation with a niche‐construction perspective. Niche‐construction theory suggests that the behavior of organisms and their modification of the world around them have important evolutionary ramifications by altering developmental settings and selection pressures. Part of Homo sapiens' niche is the active provisioning of children with play objects — sometimes functional miniatures of adult tools — and the encouragement of object play, such as playful knapping with stones. Our model suggests that salient material culture innovation may occur or be primed in a late childhood or adolescence sweet spot when cognitive and physical abilities are sufficiently mature but before the full onset of the concerns and costs associated with reproduction. We evaluate the model against a series of archeological cases and make suggestions for future research.
This review summarizes current thinking about the concept of modern behavior in the context of Neandertals and anatomically modern humans. The decoupling of modern anatomy and modern behavior has prompted researchers to reframe studies of the emergence of modern humans as a debate that explicitly focuses on the origins of behavioral modernity making its intersection with modern anatomy a point of discussion rather than a given. Four questions arise from this debate: (a) What is modern behavior? (b) Is the emergence of modern behavior sudden or more gradual? (c) Is modern behavior unique to modern humans or more widely shared with other species, most notably the Neandertals? (d) Is the emergence of modern behavior primarily the result of new cognitive abilities or social, cultural, demographic, and historic factors? This review briefly addresses each of these questions and in the process offers some thoughts on the current state of the debate.
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